Reflecting on what has been a thought provoking and enjoyable experience at my first SBS research away day today at UoManchester. First up was a fantastic talk from @whelanfj.bsky.social and the day just kept on giving! Feeling hugely excited for what is to come in my new academic home :)

Join the online course "A Hands-on Course in Bayesian Modelling and Evolutionary Analysis using RevBayes" from April 21-24. More details at https://www.physalia-courses.org/courses-workshops/bayesian-phylogenetics/. #course

Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, Dr Katherine Davey, conducts new research @manmetuni.bsky.social offering the first national picture of how inequalities emerge for academically successful working-class women. media.leverhulme.ac.uk/feature/kdavey

Congratulations to Eilidh Ward (first author and PhD student co-supervised by co-authors Julie Aspden, David Westhead and yours truly) on this lovely contribution - a method to visually inspect reads from novel open reading frames: doi.org/10.1093/bioa...

Join us at the Evolutionary Biology Centre at Uppsala University. We’re searching for an Assistant Professor in Biology. www.uu.se/en/about-uu/...

Pre-announcement ... keep an eye out for news of our upcoming #Biodiversity #Bioinformatics Summer School 21-26 June in Germany co-organised by @sib.swiss & @denbi.bsky.social ... sign up to the mailing list to be sure not to miss it! www.sib.swiss/training/upc...

Mother nature is a raver.

The abstract submission deadline (Jan 31st) for the 2026 Mathematical and Computational Evolutionary Biology Meeting on Crete mceb2026.sciencesconf.org is this Saturday!

Last chance to apply for our funded PhD opportunity. w. Prof. Fredric Coulon @ Cranfield University. This will investigate expansion of ML models for AMR phenotype detection to agriculture settings to create a sensor-ready hit list. Detail here: www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

📣 Please spread: we’re hiring a Lab Manager! It is a critical position in our new lab. As our lab moves to Barcelona and joins the @crg.eu, we’re looking for a Lab Manager to help build the lab and set the lab atmosphere. 🔗 Apply here 👉 recruitment.crg.eu/content/jobs...

A new study by Philip Leverhulme Prize Winner Harrison Steel, @gabriel-abrahams.bsky.social and others has proved for the first time that it is possible to deliberately engineer quantum mechanical processes occurring inside a protein, and use these to create new sensing technologies.

The submission deadline (Jan 31st) for the 2026 Mathematical and Computational Evolutionary Biology Meeting in Crete mceb2026.sciencesconf.org is getting closer!

NYU's Rocha Lab seeks a Postdoctoral Associate in Evolutionary Biology. Ideal candidates hold a PhD, with expertise in genetic diversity, bioinformatics, and mentoring. Apply by Feb 26, 2026. More info: https://apply.interfolio.com/180051 #postdoc

Interested in pangenomics ? This paper just out from Alan Beavan (not on socials), @blackpassiflora.bsky.social and @jomcinerney.bsky.social is a must: doi.org/10.1093/bioi...

So excited to have @szytynska.bsky.social kicking off our Evolution & Ecology day at @manchester.ac.uk today! #UoM_EEday

Our latest: Independent origins of spicules reconcile paleontological and molecular evidence of sponge evolutionary history, led by @meleonora-rossi.bsky.social with help from friends @bristolpalaeo.bsky.social including @anariesgo.bsky.social @evopalaeo.bsky.social Davide Pisani and many others

300,000 Wondrous Nature Illustrations Put Online by The Biodiversity Heritage Library | Open Culture

Thawornwattana, Rannala & @zihengyang.bsky.social use simulation to study the false positive rate of a Bayesian test of gene flow under the MSC with multiple influencing factors. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf327 #evobio #molbio #compbio

Arctic endured year of record heat as climate scientists warn of ‘winter being redefined’

🚨 What if evolution is the ”law”… and networks are the machines that do the work? In this paper (just published) I try to formalize how living systems are non-equilibrium, information-processing, adaptive matter. With a great biological flavor! 🧪🌐🌍🧬🦠 👉 iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1... 🧵 1/

We have a PhD studentship available starting in October 2026. Investigating climate change heat stress impacts on maternal and child health. Get in touch if you have questions! www.findaphd.com/phds/project...

Wow, this is a very impressive embryo model. "What sets the model described in this study apart from other embryo models is its ability to continuously mimic primate development from pre-implantation through to late gastrulation." (Nice, @amartinezarias.bsky.social!) www.nature.com/articles/d41...

Latest preprint with @hairyllama.bsky.social and @evol-molly.bsky.social This is a program that helps calculate several phylogenetic support measures.

Please help! We are looking for tissue-specific RNA-seq datasets or pubs with both male and female individual gene expression data, not pooled, from animal species. If you know of any relevant resources, please drop a link in the comments or send me a DM. Also, please help spread the word - thanks!

Paper out by the sensational @haideetinning.bsky.social and @niamhforde.bsky.social and co-authors. A conceptus-derived and highly conserved protein “PDI” alters function of endometrium to facilitate early preg events in mammals with different early preg phenotypes. academic.oup.com/biolreprod/a...

Our latest, led by the inimitable Chris Kay "Dated gene duplications elucidate the evolutionary assembly of eukaryotes" in which we used gene duplications to test hypotheses of eukaryogenesis. TLDR? They're all wrong. With @tweethinking.bsky.social @anya1.bsky.social @ssolo.bsky.social Davide Pisani

New editor's spotlights to highlight some of the exciting work we see at #MGen, getting kicked off by @bjesseshapiro.bsky.social diving into the latest work from @sylvainbrisse.bsky.social et al 🔍 vaccine impacts on non-target species! #MicroSky #MicrobiomeSky #IDSky #MedSky #evobio #clinmicro 💻🧬 🧪

Sharma & Kumar present the Net Bootstrap Support (NBS) approach that accounts for phylogenetic variation in the estimates of bootstrap confidence. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf296 #evobio #molbio #phylogenetics

How to keep in step when your (protein) partner speeds up… Here we investigated the adaptive remodeling of a protein-protein interaction surface essential for telomere protection. Congrats to whole team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

i’m not crying you’re crying xkcd: Fifteen Years

Povilus et al. examined DNA methylation and genetic imprinting in water lily species, finding that maternal gene expression and parent-specific DNA methylation in the endosperm likely represent the ancestral condition of seed development. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf271 #evobio #molbio #PlantSky

Happy to present TOGA2, developed by Yury Malovichko @ymalovichko.bsky.social, the faster, memory-efficient & more accurate TOGA1 successor (github.com/hillerlab/TO...). And annotations, orthologs & gene loss/dup data generated with 4 references for 883 placental mammal and with 5 refs for 676 ...

Latest work out today in @currentbiology.bsky.social We find the fly development gene bicoid is much older than previously thought (~20 million yrs older!) 🪰🧬 To pinpoint its origins we tackled the Diptera phylogeny, providing some resolution (many open questions remain). 🔗 tinyurl.com/2vyuevpy

Narwhals (Monodon monoceros) are called the unicorn of the sea — for obvious reasons. This illustration by Louis A. Sargent comes from "The wild beasts of the world", v. 2 (1909), contributed to BHL by @uoftlibraries.bsky.social: www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/19657038 #SciArt #ILoveBHL 🧪 📖 🌊

A series of before/after satellite images comparing areas of high ecological importance in the Caspian Sea tell the story of 20 years of falling water levels. The Caspian is rapidly heading towards severe consequences for biodiversity and people living in the region. goodmanlab.org/2025/11/22/t...

In a new MBE Perspective, @jomcinerney.bsky.social introduces the concepts of epaktovars and xenotypes, providing a framework for describing phenotypic convergence and shared genetic material resulting from gene transfer across diverse lineages. 🔗 doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msaf279 #evobio #molbio

🚨🦜🐧Cover reveal! Thrilled to show off the cover of my upcoming book: The Story of Birds! Coming April 28. The whole history of birds, from their dinosaur origins to colossal extinct penguins & terror birds, to the 10,000+ species today. From @marinerbooks.bsky.social Preorder 👇

Fast females, slow males: accelerated ageing and reproductive senescence in Drosophila melanogaster females across diverse social environments url: academic.oup.com/evlett/artic...

HipHipHorray for a fabulous first day… at the University of Manchester!:) excited for the future and looking forward to some wonderful sciencing together !:) once I find my way through all my boxes lol

#Evolution of complex adaptations can involve changes in multiple traits that lack standalone function. @benitoexplains.bsky.social &co show that leaf masquerade in #katydids evolved via concurrent modification in wing colour & shape, driven by evolutionary synergy @plosbiology.org 🧪 plos.io/4oUE741

Coming through! Important ptarmigan stuff to do! #birds 🌿

Life-changing eye implant helps blind patients read again. 🧪 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Working from home works for everyone 🧪 #Zoom

MicroRNAs at the centre of this success story for treatment of Huntington’s disease.. truly wonderful and inspiring progress. Well done to all involved : www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

🧪microRNA treatment success for Huntington's disease announced. It sounds promising but hasn't published yet. Will it pass the peer-review sniff test? Will it get licensed in the US in 2026? Also, how did it take this long for me to realize BBC doesn't use the Oxford comma?

There are two weeks to go in the fundraising campaign for the Natural History Society of Maryland's new shark science and conservation exhibit, and we have to raise about $1,400 more. Please consider chipping in to help. Thank you! www.southernfriedscience.com/help-support... #SciComm 🧪🦑🌎

Grad school is HARD. Feels like everyone else has it together—but newsflash: everyone struggles, even your PI! These faculty interviews discussing their grad school struggles made me feel less alone. Share these with your cohort and be nicer to yourself 🧪🌿🎓 risecenter.asu.edu/fail-safe

It’s almost Ctenophore Day! I set up a BioBlitz on @inaturalist.bsky.social to celebrate. Spread the word, and let’s see how many people we can get out looking for ctenos! 🐙🦑🌿🧪 www.inaturalist.org/projects/cte...

How location drives productivity #Science "Life scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology publish top research papers at a rate that is among the highest in the world" www.science.org/content/arti...

Launching soon! R for Biochemists 101 begins on Monday 8 September 2025. Don’t miss your chance to boost your data skills and gain confidence in R. Secure your place today🧪 : buff.ly/cyJve1t